Recently Nate was like, “Remember when you thought I couldn’t feel pain?”
And I was like, “Oh yeaaaaaaah…. remember that?”
It was last summer. Right before I got my new car. I went through a phase where I noticed Nate wasn’t responding to pain like most kids. He could be bleeding and he didn’t complain. He always had cuts and bruises and absolutely zero memory of the root cause. His entire torso was covered in poison oak and it wasn’t really a thing.
I started reflecting on times past. Like when he was little and stepped on a spiky petrified chestnut pod and had dozens of inch-long splinters sticking out of the bottom of his foot. I nearly fainted. It looked like the bottom of a pier. He didn’t cry as I pulled never-ending splinters out of his chubby little sole and renamed Alesia’s house Briarfoot Farm. And there was that time I had traipsed him around the Valley Fair Mall for hours while he had a triple-digit fever.
I couldn’t remember any clear times where Nate had cried in pain. Frustration? Sure. Indignation? Most def. Fear? Totally. But pain? Anyone? No one could recall. I mostly remembered kids running into him and then falling backward like they’d hit a brick wall. Toddler Nate had a sturdy build.
Is it possible we’d gone eight years and hadn’t noticed Nate has that rare pain disorder a’la Bruce Willis in Unbreakable? How bad a parent am I?
So I start asking around. Questioning people as their kids come running toward them wailing in pain. Then I ask my brother. And he recounts this story of gashing his shin and not even noticing until his son points out that blood is running into his shoe. He tells me Granddad has similar tales. I’m reminded of the labor and delivery nurse telling me I had a high tolerance for pain.
My research has led to three conclusions: Nate has probably just inherited some familial trait that either involves faulty pain receptors, a higher tolerance for pain, or a combo. When Nate is in fact down for the count, he’s taken a pretty hard hit.
And I’m probably not as bad a parent as I feared… probably.